This page contains a list of petawatt-level lasers in operation, under construction, or proposed. The list is compiled from existing academic reviews. [1] [2]
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A petawatt laser is typically defined as a laser system whose pulse energy divided by its pulse duration reaches an order of magnitude of 1015 W, or 1 petawatt. These high-power laser pulses are capable of driving a strong electromagnetic field, giving rise to a number of novel applications. For instance, focusing large numbers of petawatt level lasers on a target containing deuterium and tritium creates enough energy density to drive inertial confinement fusion. Another potential application is using strong electric fields from petawatt laser pulses to drive steep density gradient structures in a plasma, which then creates field gradients capable of accelerating particles in a much shorter distance than linac; such concept is known as laser wakefield acceleration.
Generation of a petawatt laser pulse requires the pulse duration to be extremely short: to reach 1 petawatt of power, a 1 joule laser pulse will require a duration of <1 fs (< 10−15 seconds). All petawatt systems use the technique of chirped pulse amplification, which amplifies chirped, temporally stretched laser pulses before compressing them into femtosecond, ultra-high intensity pulses. For laser systems with large pulse energies, Nd:glass is typically used as a gain medium, as they can be grown into very large crystals. For laser pulses with duration near the femtosecond range, Ti:Sapphire is widely used to take advantage of its wide lasing spectrum; only such lasers can be compressed into ultrashort pulses, due to Fourier relations between the temporal and spectral widths of the pulse signal.
